Gregory Pirio has inspired audiences and reached millions of people with messages of hope, healing and personal empowerment. For over two decades he has been a global leader in promoting the constructive use of media for positive social change, and he has been responsible for the production of thousands of radio and TV programs promoting health, well-being, understanding and peace for audiences in dozens of countries around the world. Through workshops, lectures and CD-ROMs, he has motivated many in TV, radio and the print media to use their influential positions to uplift and empower individuals and their communities. His greatest impact has been felt in societies emerging from war, tyranny and other unhealthy conditions. (For more on Dr. Pirio’s work with the media around the world, see www.empowercomm.com.)

In his forthcoming book, Transforming Crisis, Dr. Pirio takes his audiences in an exciting new direction – a journey of self-discovery in which he admits to his own fears and doubts with refreshing candor, insight and courage. Just as he came to regard crises such as war, famine and pestilence as opportunities for advancement of historic proportions, Dr. Pirio views personal crises, which everyone experiences at one time or another in their lives, as critical gateways to personal liberation and spiritual growth. He believes that it is ultimately the revolution in the individual mind that moves history forward in the most meaningful and enduring ways.

Trained as a historian, Dr. Pirio researched and wrote extensively on the strivings of people around the globe to overcome racial and other forms of oppression in a bid to chart their own destinies. He saw how committed activists deployed the power of the media to promote badly needed change and to embolden the oppressed into action. Early in his career as a young international journalist, Dr. Pirio received his first direct lesson about the power of the media to influence the course of events when he broke internationally the story of a looming famine in then war-torn Mozambique. The famine put more than three million Mozambicans at risk of starvation. His reporting helped both to spur the country’s authorities into action and to galvanize the international community to provide needed humanitarian relief.

Dr. Pirio’s approach is rooted in the hard lessons of reality. He learned first-hand about the extent to which some people will go to stop the pursuit of truth. In the 1980s he was made the target of an aggressive covert campaign of disinformation and intimidation launched by a military intelligence unit of then-Apartheid South Africa. The campaign sought to discredit Dr. Pirio’s efforts to use international radio broadcasting to promote dialog, reconciliation, a culture of tolerance and peaceful solution to conflict in war-ravaged Angola and Mozambique. The campaign of dirty tricks involved personal harassment and also aimed at influencing the U.S. Congress and the State Department to have him removed from his position as director of Portuguese-language broadcasts to Africa of the Voice of America. When the plot was discovered by the FBI, two agent provocateurs were deported from the United States.

The message of Transforming Crisis is a hopeful one. It is designed to show us how to find meaning in the pain and suffering that we all experience when caught up in personal crisis. As Dr. Pirio shows us, those trying moments are also pregnant with the unlimited possibilities of personal liberation. Transforming Crisis serves as a guide for those willing to go down that path.